Doctoring differently

More Americans are dying from cardiovascular disease each year than people in France, Japan or Israel. Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and America also has a greater percentage of obese people than any of these countries do.

UGA researchers traveled to France, Israel and Japan to see if these trends might be related to the way doctors in the different countries interact with their patients, according to a recent article in the Athens Banner-Herald.

“We’re trying to figure out what is really happening when these visits with the doctors occur,” said Colleen O’Brien Cherry, an assistant research scientist at UGA’s Center for Global Health, told the Banner-Herald. “If the doctor is having a direct effect, that will help explain the lower cardiovascular death rates in these other countries.”

Most U.S. doctors didn’t talk about obesity with their patients at all, according to Cherry’s study. However, in France doctors were much more likely to ask patients who gained weight about their eating habits and lifestyle.

Cherry and collaborator Richard Schuster, who is the director of the Center for Global Health in UGA’s College of Public Health, hope the research can be used to help improve the health care system in the U.S.